Tag Archives: Industrial Revolution

On Luther, more later. But now another challenging question arises in our complex, post-Christian workplaces full of real, fallen people:

Does practicing the virtues demanded by the working life (such as industriousness, self-control, service to others, obedience to rules and leaders) reduce us to drones or pawns in exploitive structures of modern work? Or, Does becoming a good Christian worker mean sacrificing social conscience for placid obedience—prophetic witness for financial security?

To help us answer this, we turn to our second past leader, England’s 18th-century evangelical pioneer, John Wesley.

Anyone remember the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics? As the spectacle started, before millions of worldwide viewers, England’s pastoral island paradise rose slowly into view from below ground, to the wafting strains of British composer Edward Elgar.

But then – suddenly – the paradise was shattered.

Like missiles from silos, belching smokestacks shot up to dominate the landscape, accompanied by violent drumming and harsh music. The Industrial Revolution had arrived. Legions of laborers overran the green land, marching and working rhythmically under the watchful eyes of black-coated capitalists. TV commentators gleefully quoted the Victorain poet William Blake, describing how the Industrial Revolution’s “Satanic mills” had brutalized the landscape and crushed workers. The ceremony’s creator, they told viewers, had titled this section “Pandemonium,” after the capital city of hell in Milton’s Paradise Lost.

This dramatic vignette sets the stage for our second question about whether Christians are capitulating to immorality if they lend their labor to the industries of a secular world. Certain historians have leveled exactly this charge against one of the most active British Christian movements during the time of the industrial revolution: the Methodists. These historians have argued that the early Methodists simply capitulated, like sheep and slaves, to the worst of the Industrial Revolution, perpetuating its abuses when they should have stood against them.

Methodism was born in the late 1730s—when the steady industrious virtue of the old Puritans and the new capitalist habits of long-term investment were beginning to build the commercial machine that would drive Western economic growth in the centuries to come.

Well folks, I’m in day 3 of Acton University. What follows are my notes from a session that took place yesterday, June 17, 2010. The presenter was Rev. Raymond de Souza, Chaplain of the Newman House at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, where he is also an adjunct professor in the economics department. Prior to attending seminary at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, he studied economics at Queen’s, in Manila, Philippines, and at the University of Cambridge. He serves as editor of Acton’s Religion and Liberty and is a regular columnist for Canada’s National Post.

CST 101 Introduction to Catholic Social Teaching, de Souza

Catholic social teaching is broader than economics, but he’s an economist and so will focus on that aspect.

Catholic teaching on the social order. Not (just) the state. Think of all the social relations you’re part of. Many of these have nothing to do with the state.

What we’re really focusing on is reflections on the modern state—from the late 19th century, what does the church have to say about the ordering of society: culture, politics, economics. Dominated a lot by the state, so lots of talk about the states.

Social teaching for the church is a branch of theology. Means it ought to begin with divine revelation.

We can get right into the realm of philosophy, moral philosophy—can seem as if we are leaving God out of it. But it’s a branch of theology: moral theology (to do with human action).

Practical problem: you go to any Catholic University and take degree in moral philosophy: you do all kinds of stuff (he lists), but not much on social doctrine. That’s why the mission of Acton! Continue reading →

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